Hard Light- Infamous

by Warren Hately

  Getting out of the cul-de-sac wasn’t pretty. The dead cop had already accounted for one of his headlights, and he lost more pretty glass and paintwork clipping a parked Hyundai, its owner and many others spilling out of the neighbouring villas. By the time the Fairmont looped around and cleared the intersection, turning for the freeway, Flanagan could see Doyle and the other uniform running down the road toward the crime scene, Doyle bellowing into his handset and staring hard through the Fairmont’s window as Flanagan gunned the engine, the car leaping like a racehorse from the barrier up and to the right.

  The laneway intersected Thomas Street, and it wasn’t hard to guess which way Hopkins had gone. Three cars had come to skewing halts across the six-lane road. Another two got clipped, one clearing the huge island and going head-first into a milk truck headed the other way. The milko was a twisted stain in white shorts and a t-shirt ten metres in front of his shattered windscreen, and other motorists spilled from their cars trying not to get hit as they rendered first aid.

  The Fairmont’s wheels screeched as Flanagan took off. Horns were sounding like the devil’s glockenspiel in the background, punctuated by the riff of more breaking glass and heavy vehicle impacts. Yet all that was quickly beyond him as he accelerated, breaking the limit in a matter of seconds and leaving oily smoke in his wake. He wished he had a blue light he could slap on the roof – a warrant card to save him from future prosecution would be nice as well – but the horrified pedestrians, joggers and stalled drivers on the freeway bridge were pretty good indicators of the path Hopkins had taken.

  He caught a glimpse of the police car disappearing into the Polly Farmer Tunnel, one of the city’s best and most deservingly-named innovations since he’d been away. Hoping to channel just a little of the nuggetty black footballer’s spirit, and mindful of the current irony, Flanagan slewed right, veered across lanes to deliberately cut off as many other drivers as possible, and then hammered the gas as he descended the slope and tore into the tunnel’s black maw.

  The yellow submarine lights weren’t much helped by Flanagan’s sole high beam, but he threw it on anyway, eyes prickling at the adjustment, the Fairmont running well if a little breathlessly down the one-way passage, several cars already pulled over into the emergency lane, only one of them a collision, a young woman holding hands to her sobbing face and unable to explain her shattered windscreen and missing door.

  For whatever reason, Hopkins was not at top gear. Only a few hundred metres into the tunnel, Flanagan started to gain. He slammed his hand down on the horn repeatedly, purpose uncertain, the black shapes of vehicles both large and small ahead of them nothing but dreadful possibilities as far as Flanagan was concerned.

  Like the bellowing of some vast Cyclopean cow, the long rolling sound of a truck horn bounced with violence from the smooth rounded walls of the tunnel. A tanker driver two hundred metres ahead began to slow, veering across to the left lane he should’ve been in anyway, the enormous silver cylinder of his load looming to hedge the errant police car in as it nearly jack-knifed. Flanagan went on until right behind Hopkins, front fender gently scraping the police car’s tail like some madman’s dare. He could see Hopkins’ hair-model stylings bop in impotent rage, confusion, desperation, the volume mercifully down.

  Hopkins slowed the cruiser to a halt and swerved so the vehicle parked side-on. He was out in an instant.

  “Now comes the hard part,” Flanagan said.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The truckie slid across to the passenger side and had the elevated truck door open before common sense could scream for him to do otherwise. Flanagan pulled the Glock from beneath his seat as the truck door clattered open and a bloke called Norm or Dave or Pete in a white t-shirt, shorts and Blundstones levered himself onto the wheel arch and bellowed, “What the fuck are you thinking?”

  And Hopkins shot him.

  The driver’s t-shirt bloomed beneath the heart and Norm or Dave or Pete sagged, flabby yet muscular arms caught on the doorframe, heels kicking to keep upright.

  Flanagan yelled.

  Hopkins turned and Flanagan showed him the gun, adrenalin psychosis warring with a deeper sense of self-caution. It was all the hesitation the footballer needed to save his life. He dropped beneath the roof of the police car and again came the fierce mechanical bolt noise of the automatic bullets traversing the closed windows of the cop car, Flanagan chewing bitumen rather than chance Brett Hopkins’ aim.

  From the ground, Flanagan emptied two bullets into the cop car door, hoping desperately that would be enough. Prior caution ringing a late alarm, he jerked his gaze up to look at the warnings plastered on the tanker.

  Sirens whortled up from behind. The truckie slipped gracelessly from the door of the truck and hit the roadway likc a sack. Flanagan threw a look behind and saw the first police cars swerving up the tunnel. The backlog of drivers who’d stalled rather than come into the kill zone meant the police vehicles were blocked back a few hundred metres.

  Several more cars had hit the brakes just behind Flanagan, dragged in to the disaster by reason of their own momentum. Knowing he was hopelessly exposed, Flanagan duck-walked as fast as possible around the back of the Fairmont. There were several more gunshots. Glass broke and a woman shrieked.

  Flanagan scanned around, saw several men and a kid in a woolly cap running madly away toward the police lights. A woman in a football scarf, obviously the wrong team, lay on the ground kicking her trendy winter calfskins, blood gushing horribly from her side.

  “Hopkins! Hold on!” Flanagan yelled.

  He looked over the bumper and saw just a suggestion of movement, the black flash of what was ironically also a Glock, the police buying up cheap too.

  “Hopkins, you’ve gone fucking crazy, you nut,” Flanagan yelled. “There’s police everywhere. Throw the gun down.”

  “Fuck you, Flanagan,” Hopkins jeered back, almost crying. “I’m not going to jail. We’ve got Ned Kelly’s blood in my family, you cunt. I’m taking you down with me.”

  Flanagan’s last reasonable thought was drug psychosis. Then he watched as Hopkins stood, calm as any movie killer, hoisting the matte pistol and moving around the end of the slewed cruiser stopped beneath the tanker’s shadow.

  The first bullet tore a groove across the Fairmont’s shit brown paintjob, impact forcing the boot open. Flanagan dropped lower, shoulder to the tarmac now, a good view beneath his own rear bumper as he squeezed off one, two, three, four shots.

  Only one of the rounds hit, taking Hopkins in the upper arm. It was enough. The madman’s gun skidded across the asphalt, the reality of pain and danger sending the footballer’s reptilian brain into a skid. Immediately, Hopkins dropped back – and committed a fatal mistake.

  Liquid nitrogen poured with gassy glee from the three bullet holes in the tanker’s flank. Hopkins threw himself right under it, no clue to what was going on until the freezing hot pain numbed his arm, back and face. Then he looked up into it in shock and horror, mouth open to scream something, perhaps calling on God or his mother as most men did. The flooding spray of chemicals hit him full in the face, invaded his throat, froze the arm raised uselessly to ward himself. And the chemical downpour just kept coming.

  Within a few seconds, he couldn’t even kick his legs.

  *

  FLANAGAN WIPED THE prints from his pistol and used the t-shirt to tuck the weapon into the back of his jeans. Then he danced like an autograph-seeker in a warzone around the blockade of cars, pulling the truck driver free of the ever-expanding chemical pool, harsh gas like a death cloud looming over them.

  Norm or Dave or Pete groaned, and his eyes fluttered open looking up at Flanagan as he was dragged at express further down the roadway.

  “Am I fucked?”

  “Na, you’ll be right, just got you in the heart, mate.”

  He dropped the driver hard enough that his head rang out on the bitumen. Then Flanagan ran back for the woman in the middle of the road, an able pair of hands join
ing him, a female cop first on the scene and grabbing the woman’s legs.

  “Nice boots,” she said, face set in a feral sneer with the adrenalin.

  They hauled the victim like a sack of manure until she was well back from the danger area. Other escapes milled around them. Flanagan was barely conscious of Doyle coming forward, the bag strapped to his leg sloshing half-full, a hand on Flanagan’s shoulder just a squeeze to communicate something – concern, perhaps approval, maybe sympathy for what lay ahead.

  “Hopkins?”

  “He’s cactus, mate,” Flanagan said. “The spill’s the problem.”

  “Right then, everyone back. Those cars are empty?”

  “Gotta check for anyone still hiding, Frank,” Flanagan said.

  “OK, you get yourself back. Don’t disappear.”

  Then Doyle was off, manhandling uniforms and directing them like a coach towards the most important areas of play.

  Flanagan took a bunch of deep breaths, the policewoman beside him busy with the shot woman’s injuries. She had pulled the woman’s mohair jumper up and Flanagan could see the tiny loose hairs plastered by the bullet impact all along the taut exposed side.

  “No exit wound,” the cop said.

  “Want a hand to move her back?”

  The officer looked up, wiped sweat from beneath her taut blonde hair, eyes a shade of critical blue.

  “You’ve done enough, don’t you reckon?”

  *

  THE POLICEWOMAN’S HOSTILITY shouldn’t have surprised him, or that’s what Flanagan told himself as he sat on the curb on the approach to the tunnel.

  First Class Constable Marie Newish saw Flanagan cosy in the company of top cops like Doyle and frowned as her universe clearly stopped making sense. It was a good thing she didn’t read the statement later concocted at the Leederville cop shop, where Flanagan explained how he and Doyle had been sharing the ride and it was Doyle’s handiwork with the gun and the tanker full of deep freeze. Somewhere in the middle of it, a young, obviously progressive guy in uniform slipped Doyle a folded up sheet of paper, and that – a retrospective permit for the suddenly-registered Glock – quickly found its way into Flanagan’s surrogate wallet, aka his back pocket. The other paperwork was signed by midnight and there was none of the guilt, nausea or hypertension he expected. If he was being utterly frank with himself, or perhaps even utterly Frank, which he usually was, he conceded seeing Hopkins freeze-dried was exactly the sort of tonic he needed. If only fate would be so kind to have Carlo Franco stabbed to death in jail, the trifecta would be complete, though none of it would ever fill the hole left by Allyson’s death. And the rift of guilt on that one was wide enough for him to drive through.

  “What are you thinking?” Doyle asked, walking back into the interview room and scattering a handful of loose cigarettes on the table like they were lollies.

  Flanagan sighed and stretched out to grab one, accepting the detective’s light.

  “About the girl, again.”

  “Did you fuck her?”

  Flanagan snapped his gaze back into those unassuming yet humourless dark eyes and dropped any pretence at indignation.

  “Maybe you did the girl a favour. God knows, she was fucked over by the bad guys in the end.”

  “You’ve got such a sweet way with words, Frank.”

  “You iced that fucker, and I do mean literally,” Doyle chuckled. “Cheer up. Not many blokes get away with murder in this town and get to go home at the end of the night. You hungry?”

  “Starving, if you can believe it.”

  “It’s the caveman genes. Happens to us all. Like funerals. Makes us hornier’n fuck.” Doyle helped himself to a smoke and motioned for Flanagan to gather up the survivors. “Come on. It’s Fast Edie’s time, and I’m buying. I reckon you for a Bacon Big Boy man. How about it?”

  “And I figure you for a Cop The Lot. Close?”

  “Spot on, Michael,” the dour old cop said. “I told you, you missed your calling when you didn’t go into police-work.”

  “Fuck,” Flanagan sighed. “Enough with the broken record, Frank. If tonight didn’t prove I wasn’t cut out for the police, nothing ever will.”

  “You might not’ve made a good cop, Flanagan, but you’re a hell of an assassin. Remind me to give you a call next time there’s someone we can’t nail.”

  Flanagan followed Doyle out of the restricted area, through reception, and out the front of the station. He wanted to say something about Doyle joking, but by the time they were past the ground-floor troops again, the moment had passed.

  *

  TENEILLE WAS RIGHT when she said it was a lot more complicated to buy a house than even Flanagan reckoned. Final settlement was still a week away, according to the agent his bank manager had nominated, so rather than land on Lord and Teneille and risk any hard feelings, Flanagan took a room in the Whale & Tanker and got very drunk and then slept for two days.

  As they parted, milkshakes drained, Doyle handed Flanagan a small plastic kitchen bag. In it were a few thousand in fifties and hundred dollar bills.

  “Confiscated this from Franco, was on his person,” the cop said. “I seem to remember something about an illegal betting operation. You heard of it?”

  Flanagan would have had a hard time telling tens from twenties at that moment. Nonetheless, the heft and feel of the bundle seemed terribly familiar, though no doubt Franco had spent considerably from the initial wager since he and Flanagan parted company at the market garden.

  “You … knew about that thing? Fight Club?”

  “Is that what they called it?”

  “Fuck, no imagination to call it anything else. I don’t blame ‘em,” Flanagan said. “Good movie. Shame they missed the point.”

  “Yeah, big shame,” Doyle said without sympathy. “You’ll soon learn, son, not a lot goes on in this town we don’t know about.”

  “Is that the royal ‘we,’ Frank?”

  “Well, I don’t strictly mean the West Australian Police. You have a good night, son. That should give you cab fare to wherever it is you’re going.”

  Doyle walked away under the neon signs, his own ride parked illegally several doors down. As usual – wonderfully unchanged, in fact, from the days of his own studenthood – there were a couple of cabs at the rank down Hay Street from the 24-hour eatery. Flanagan slid his heavier-by-the-minute weight into the back of one. Any other time, he was a front-seat driver. Now, he lay down on his side and covered his eyes with a forearm.

  “Where to, cobber?”

  “Fremantle,” Flanagan said.

  EPILOGUE

  HIS MOTHER’S VOICE cracked with nerves.

  “Derek, this is my son, Mick.”

  They shook hands, no outward aggression. Derek was an Islander, something of a novelty on the west coast, big and brown as a teak carving, built like the rugby player he supposedly was. Handsome even, but old now, hair shaved short, a single ring through one ear, teeth to make an Irishman burn with envy.

  “Mick, it’s a long time I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

  Derek and Flanagan released their grips as if by formal agreement. Half-a-dozen utterly cunty things to say vied for his attention, but in the end Flanagan managed a mute nod, his throat tight, the reality that his dad was dead never more real than in meeting the monster his mother was now fucking. For something that was threatened for years, it was suddenly very difficult to take.

  Nuala stepped close and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, her other hand making smoothing motions between his shoulder blades. Again came the temptation to break free, maybe even do a Barry Hall, something horrible and tragic to ruin the day and give him leave to go on the run again. Instead, he turned and kissed his sister on the cheek.

  “It’s not like you’re gaining a son, Derek,” he said finally with a wry drawl. “It’s that you’re losing a daughter.”

  Nuala burst into mock tears and buried her face in Flanagan’s shoulder, and Derek and his mum and De
rek’s unnervingly good-looking daughter Isis (baptised Catherine) all grinned, the tension of the moment spilling, Flanagan unnecessarily looking up at the crap bunting and “farewell Nuala” pinned up in the slightly sad-looking lounge.

  He eased himself free, taking a few steps into the sagging living room, a house in need of re-stumping never made so obvious. He could smell the mildew in the boards, the possums behind the fibro-and-plaster walls, but the little sausage rolls wafted in from the kitchen, and Flanagan, the dentist’s anaesthetic just wearing off, felt his stomach lurch in that direction. Derek joined in too, big hands all but tearing the door from the little antique fridge as he looked across, bent over.

  “Beer?”

  “Great. Anything.”

  Flanagan made the catch and then complied with his mother’s call to check the oven. The little buggers weren’t quite ready yet. Once he’d broken the top off his can and downed most of it, Derek smacked his lips together and started throttling the bottle of tomato sauce.

  “Pass us the bowl there, will ya?”

  Flanagan complied, watching as the big man shook sauce into it.

  “Your mum tells me you were in the army.”

  “Army?” Flanagan smiled. “Defence forces, yeah. Not the army.”

  Derek raised a big eyebrow.

  “She’s probably trying to do the right thing, thinks she can’t speak about it. I was overseas for a bit. All over now.”

  Derek grunted, put the bottle down. “Hmmm. What now? I heard you bought a house. That’s good.”

  “Yeah. You own this place?”

  “Sure do.”

  Flanagan saw his chance and seized it, spent the next half-hour talking about the garden and renovations, sharing the sausage rolls between themselves, and a couple more beers. No need to mention he’d booked a flight to Melbourne, would be doing the PEA course for the next six weeks. Derek seemed like a good bloke, however easily distracted.